Ouch

Just after the release of Man On Fire, I dug out an old Tony Scott movie called Revenge. It makes a very interesting companion piece to the later movie, treating a similar story as one of revenge rather than redemption.

Kevin Costner stars as a fighter pilot who has an affair with Madeleine Stowe (unfortunately married to rich Mexican gangster Anthony Quinn), setting up a series of violent incidents. Although the movie is coated in Scott’s trademark style of the time (this was just after Top Gun), and the first half is more or less a standard romantic melodrama, it’s notable for an amazingly downbeat and serious second half which demonstrates the pointlessness and emptiness of revenge as a motive. Fine performances from the leads and from a great supporting cast, including Miguel Ferrer, Tomas Milian and John Leguizamo.

Update:

I reviewed Revenge a while ago, and now it’s returned in a director’s cut which is unusually 20 minutes SHORTER than the original.  A memorable bit of violence has been removed, the sex scenes are more explicit, a lot of the secondary characters have gone and it all feels more like a straightforward action movie. The end is still a real downer, in a positive way, but one dialogue scene has been removed which is badly missed. Scott is obviously trying to bring some attention to an unjustly-neglected part of his back catalogue, which is good, but it also seems he’s updating his movie to cater for a modern audience with a shorter attention span. Which isn’t good.

Mild Peril Rating:

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